Socialism and the Highly Questionable 14th Amendment

by Al Benson Jr.

Moral decline, one of the main fruits of apostasy, is always accompanied by a decline in the level of personal responsibility. However, just because responsibility is neglected does not mean that it is eliminated. If a formerly responsible people decide to abdicate their responsibilities and to adopt a "Let George (the state) do it attitude, then rest assured that "George, or Honest Abe, or Obama will most assuredly do it and the people will live to regret what they do. If you like Obama's new "health care reform" package go to the Holy Scriptures and read First Samuel, chapter 8.

After the War of Northern Aggression, as federal power mushroomed, the states lost power (one of the real reasons for the war). Now, in these latter years of insanity we seem to be living in, many state governors, in order to maintain their popularity with a jaded electorate that wants everything done for them, have jumped on the "federal funds bandwagon" and many state governors have spent much time running to Washington for "their fair share" of the collectivist federal pie. This has had the effect of turning the states into mere vassals of Washington (exactly as Abraham Lincoln wanted). If conditions today are to be reversed, this has to cease!

After the War, what the Yankee/Marxist crowd in Washington sought to do, along with destroying the religious base of the South, was to destroy also its economic and political base. They would, therefore, forever end any Southern competition to the North, and they would also break the "rebellious spirit" of the South so that secession and nullification would never be considered again.

Marxist-minded professional South-hater Thaddeus Stevens was the prime mover behind the 14th Amendment. Up until that amendment you had been considered a citizen of the United States by virtue of first being a citizen of the state of your residence. If you lived in Louisiana as I now do, you were a citizen of the US because you were first a citizen of Louisiana. The 14th Amendment turned that on its head, making your prime citizenship a national citizenship and your state citizenship became of only secondary importance.

As he worked at crafting the 14th Amendment, one of those Stevens took advice from was Robert Dale Owen, son of the well-known English socialist Robert Owen, who founded a socialist community in New Harmony, Indiana in 1829. Robert Dale was every bit as much of a socialist as his daddy was. Yet this is where Stevens went for advice. Have you ever stopped to wonder why the "history" books never bothered to mention this? The answer is simple. They realize that you (for their purposes) are "better off" not knowing things like this. That way you can't ask embarrassing questions.

If those in Congress were taking the advice of socialists in the mid-1860s (see the book "Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists published by iUniverse) then can we really be naive enough to believe the current historical drivel that tells us our problems in this country with socialism and communism did not begin until the 1930s or shortly before? Unfortunately, many patriotic types can. They have concocted, or been fed by our court historians, a storybook version of Abraham Lincoln and his preservation of the "glorious Union" and they like that pleasant fairy tale so much that they refuse to be confused with the facts.

Some comments from the site http://maine.patriot.com might be helpful here. This site notes: "The 14th Amendment was introduced into the U.S. House by Thaddeus Stevens, congressman from Pennsylvania and into the Senate by William Pitt Fessenden.  But the language of the amendment was written by Robert Dale Owen who was a naturalized citizen from England. Robert Dale Owen's father, Robert Owen, was the acknowledged father of British socialism. The two men that introduced the proposed amendment had both worked for Robert Owen's communistic Harmony Society. In 1827, Robert Dale Owen founded 'The Free Inquirer' which was said to be a socialist publication. He was later elected to the Illinois legislature, served as ambassador to Italy and spent the end of his life devoted to abolitionism, socialism and spiritualism (talking with the dead)." So Robert Dale Owen had been, among other things, a member of the Illinois legislature. How very fitting!

Debates on this controversial amendment in a batch of state legislatures, Indiana, Arkansas, both Carolinas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin among them, made it quite clear that representatives from these states grasped the fact that the amendment was socialist in essence and that it was a device to shift the balance of power away from the states and place it with the federal government.

There was a big fuss over this amendment and, even in our day, it is highly doubtful that it was ever properly ratified. David Lawrence, Editor of the "US News & World Report" wrote, back in 1957 that: "The so-called 14th Amendment was dubiously proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 20, 1868. The President shared that doubt. There were 37 states in the Union at that time, so ratification by at least 28 was necessary to make the amendment an integral part of the Constitution. Actually only 21 states legally ratified it. So it failed ratification."  Let that little thought sink in for awhile.

In the South, all the old Confederate States except Tennessee rejected ratification, as did six other states around the country, not all Southern by any means. At this point, Congress reacted in such a way as to make both Obama and Lincoln proud. In fact, Obama may have taken a page out of their book in his Marxist quest for "health reform."

Forrest McDonald, professor of history at the University of Alabama, has noted that, in the radical congressional desire to punish the South, Congress "greatly increased the powers of Congress at the expense of the states." McDonald observed that the adoption of the 14th Amendment was "marred by repeated irregularities." Is Nancy Pelosi listening??? So was the new "health reform" package, but hey, who cares, they got it through by hook or crook, "under the fence or over the fence" as Pelosi said, and for her, with her socialist worldview, the end justified the means.

Regarding the 14th Amendment, New Jersey and Ohio both changed their minds and rescinded their votes for the amendment. McDonald noted that, even if you disallowed those rescissions, the Congress was still six votes short of what they needed to get the amendment properly ratified.

Now comes the part that was, as the British say, a "sticky wicket." But Congress, in true Pelosian fashion handled their problem. Congress now required that the Southern states all rafify the amendment to get back into the Union. So we have a slight problem. How can states "ratify" anything if they are not part of the Union and do not have elected representatives seated? According to the Kennedy Brothers in "The South Was Right" states "can vote on ratification of a constitutional amendment 'only if they were duly recognized as governments at the time they acted on the amendment.' But Congress had already declared these states to be illegal governments and not part of the Union--therefore, their ratifications, according to constitutional principle, cannot be counted toward final ratification. Thus we are left with an amendment that was never ratified."

So, in other words, the Southern states, in order to get "back" into a Union that Lincoln claimed they had never been out of, had to ratify the 14th Amendment. The question should arise--if these states were out of the Union, how could they ratify anything in order to get back in? Their ratifications would have been null and void if they were not already back in, wouldn't they?  Well, maybe not--depending on what the definition is "is" is.

So we are confronted with an amendment that was socialist-inspired, and whose actual ratification is really in serious question. It sounds like business as usual in Sodom on the Potomac.